10 Greatest Poems of All Time

<span class="entry-title-primary">If</span> <span class="entry-subtitle">by Rudyard Kipling</span>

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise; Continue Reading

10 Greatest Poems of All Time

<span class="entry-title-primary">Ozymandias</span> <span class="entry-subtitle">Percy Bysshe Shelley</span>

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert… near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed: Continue Reading

10 Greatest Poems of All Time

<span class="entry-title-primary">The Raven</span> <span class="entry-subtitle">by Edgar Allan Poe</span>

Written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1845, the Raven is considered as one of the most popular and inspirational english language’s poems. Much of this was Poe’s own doing, as he performed it quite frequently, and wrote many essays and commentaries on it in the press. It has cemented itself in the modern era, and has been the subject of many portrayals, from Vincent Price in the 1960s to the Simpson’s rendition in the 1990s. One of the keys to its incredible appeal is its brilliant rhyme pattern and rhythm. While the language may be somewhat difficult to understand or relate to, people keep returning to it for Poe’s enchanting classical meter.

THE POEM

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door—
“‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”

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